The Best Booths at Art Basel in Switzerland

The New York–based Boesky Gallery marks a double milestone at Art Basel this year, celebrating 25 years since its first participation at the fair, a solo for Rachel Feinstein in 2001. Featuring works by gallery artists like Ghada Amer, Jennifer Bartlett, and Sanford Biggers, the booth above all pays tribute to Mary Lovelace O’Neal, who passed away in May, via the 11.5-foot-wide Purple Rain (ca. 1990). Most recently included in the Centre Pompidou’s 2025 exhibition “Paris Noir,” the work sold on the opening day for $1.5 million to a European museum. This monumental painting is part of the artist’s “Two Deserts, Three Winters” series, in which O’Neal incorporates self-portrait figures set within expansive, atmospheric fields inspired by the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Sahara in Egypt, landscapes she experienced during her travels in the 1980s.

As usual, Perrotin occupies one of the most impressive multi-level spaces in the Galleries sector. Within a dense constellation of gallery artists like Jean-Marie Appriou, Daniel Arsham, Takashi Murakami is a stand-out solo presentation by Jeppe Hein. Newly represented by Perrotin, Hein is shown in a dedicated corner, framed by walls painted in situ with sweeping blue wave motifs that subtly reference his passion for surfing and nature. Against this backdrop stand a seal and a flamingo rendered in reflective surfaces. Both balance balloons, a recurring motif in the Danish artist’s work, as a symbol of playfulness and fragility.

Gerhard Richter’s 2015 abstract painting Abstraktes Bild (940-7) was announced as one of the most valuable—and therefore most anticipated—works at Hauser & Wirth’s booth in Basel. However, the gallery has brought a broader curatorial proposition, including The Courtyard, a 1946 painting by Philip Guston selected for the Basel Exclusive program. “This is a very special work—his entire visual language is already present,” Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot told ARTnews at the fair. It was given by Guston to a friend shortly after it was painted and had remained in the same collection ever since, making it a remarkable discovery. After the collector passed away, his sons recognized its significance and reached out to the gallery. “Presenting ‘exclusive’ works is not new for us,” added Payot, referring to a Mark Rothko painting that had not been included in the PDFs circulated ahead of the fair last year but was instead presented at the opening. “We embrace the fair’s idea of exclusivity,” as articulated through Basel Exclusive, he added.

In the Feature sector, which focuses on 20th-century projects, a group of miniature paintings on panel stands out. Some depict everyday scenes; others capture celebrations and communal festivities. Ten years ago, the Guatemala-based gallery Proyectos Ultravioleta began researching the work of Rosa Elena Curruchich (1958–2005), now recognized as the first known Indigenous woman painter in Guatemala.

The granddaughter of Andrés Curruchich, who is considered the country’s first Indigenous painter, she never stopped painting despite being marginalized by the male artists in her community and enduring mental, physical, and sexual abuse. The violence she faced forced her to work in secrecy and on formats small enough to be concealed and transported unnoticed. During her lifetime, she had only two exhibitions, reportedly at the Alliance Française and at G&T Bank. This fall, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo will present her first solo museum exhibition.

San Francisco’s Jessica Silverman has brought to Art Basel Blue Peacock Wing (2026) by Rebecca Manson. The large wall piece is composed of ceramic and glazed elements that are then assembled on canvas, a support which gives the work a sense of movement. The title does not refer to a bird but to a type of butterfly, extending Manson’s ongoing focus on lepidopteran forms as her primary visual vocabulary. In her practice, butterfly and moth wings become metaphors for thinking about transformation, memory, and natural cycles rather than literal depiction. “I am trying to create a space that enables some type of emotional connection, especially in relation to nature,” she said.

In the Statement sector, be prepared to be moved. The New York gallery David Peter Francis presents a highly emotional installation by Emilie Louise Gossiaux, an American multidisciplinary artist who also features in the 2026 Whitney Biennial. Her work often draws on memories and an acute sense of touch as an exploration of interdependence between humans and animals. Three papier-mâché dogs with bright orange butterfly wings take center stage at the booth, each standing on their hind legs, as if ready to fly away. The image came to Gossiaux in a dream while they were grieving London, their 15-year-old Labrador, who had been the artist’s guide dog since they lost their sight. The installation, titled From Here to Eternity, also incorporates newly made tactile drawings in ballpoint pen and crayon, to be appreciated as a sequence from left to right. Gossiaux describes their “interspecies relationship” with London as a profound bond, “a commitment to each other that feels more like a marriage, for better or for worse, until death do us part,” while also reflecting on how, as a disabled person, they have often been compared to a dog, a dependent creature requiring care.

Alex Da Corte, who was chosen to take over the flagship outdoor venue Place Vendôme at Art Basel Paris last year, returns at the fair’s Swiss iteration with Dog Barking at the Moon (2006). This recent installation, mixing printed resin, floats, paint, epoxy, steel, and hardware, references a 1926 painting by Joan Miró of the same title, owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Philadelphia-based artist replaced Miró’s canine figure with the cartoon character Snoopy, holding onto the bottom of a ladder under a half moon. Nearby is another dog, a Corgi, which appears at first to be at rest but on closer view clearly lifeless. This wall-hanging ceramic sculpture is part of Italian artist Diego Marcon’s ongoing series “Altri cani morti.”

At Pedro Cera be sure to look up: tad ghost (2025) by Tobias Rehberger is installed above the Portuguese gallery’s booth, forming a luminous canopy. Differentiated by color, the lamps are illuminated from within by a shifting, programmed glow and alternate in choreographed sequences, turning the space into a constantly reconfigured field of light. Their fragile, handcrafted surfaces sit in tension with industrial systems of production, exposing a dispersed, collaborative authorship. Rehberger’s installation is shown in dialogue with Henrique Pavão’s 2025–26 Bull Guitar Drag (after Christian Marclay), Take 1, which consists of five previously used guitars covered in soil and bearing different degrees of damage. Though originally made to produce sound, they now stand as silent relics.

At Jenkins Johnson Gallery’s booth sits a monumental bronze set of five dominoes by Mildred Howard. Howard’s work centers on memory, history, and community. By upscaling the game’s pieces, Howard invites viewers to reconsider their relationship to them while reflecting on dominoes’ role as a gathering point across the African diaspora. Around the world, dominoes are played in homes, parks, and other places as a way of fostering connection. Marking the debut of a new series, the work comes fresh from the foundry.

For the Basel Exclusive program, the gallery has selected a work by Scott Fraser (b. 1957), celebrating their nearly three decades of collaboration. Fraser is showing What Goes Up (2026), a painting featuring floating chairs and a self-portrait reflected in a two-legged silver egg. “His paintings are so seductive because they are rendered with such precision. It’s not simply an image to view on a screen; it’s a painting with sheen, glow, and tooth,” said gallery director David Mitchell. “Fraser was classically trained in Europe, and there is something about this self-portrait gesture that feels especially resonant for a European audience.”

At the booth of São Paulo–based Luisa Strina, seven black panels are arranged in the shape of a week-long calendar, each dedicated to a day from Monday through Sunday. At the top of every panel, the day’s name appears in red capital letters, while the phrase “TONIGHT NO POETRY WILL SERVE” is repeated in small white text along the bottom edge. The phrase, which gives this 2013 work by Alfredo Jaar its title, is borrowed from a poem by Adrienne Rich written in response to the Iraq War. Reflecting on art’s apparent powerlessness in moments of crisis, the work nevertheless resists cynicism. As Jaar has noted, the statement applies to one night only—not the nights to come—leaving open the possibility that poetry, and art more broadly, may still matter in the face of tragedy.